WE DID IT!We made our $20,000 goal. We are speechless. Thank you so much for your support!

Thanks to you, we’re now able to hire an editor to make our rough cut. We can’t express how excited we are to be just a little bit closer to sharing this film with all of you after 4 long years.

And since we do have THREE whole days left in the campaign – and some great rewards left to share – we decided to increase our goal to $25,000! That extra $5,000 would certainly help us finance our last few critical shoots. We know this is ambitious, but hey, we never thought we’d make it this far!

Will you help us keep spreading the word? If it weren’t for you, we would not be here now. So if you know anyone who was intending to donate, please tell him or her we could still use the help. And if you can think of anyone else who might be interested in our project, please forward our Kickstarter campaign. And keep posting on Facebook and Twitter! One last burst of energy could be a huge help in finishing this film!

THANK YOU, again, for all of your encouragement and support. We're so excited to share this moment with you all.

WOW. We have only 8 days left in our campaign, and we are so close we can taste it. Thanks to you all, we have raised over 75% of our $20,000 goal!

We are overwhelmed with gratitude to you all for supporting this film and Jessica’s story. It has been such a pleasure to expand our circle of supporters and friends through this fundraising campaign, and we’ve been so happy to receive your feedback and encouragement, and meet those of you we didn’t know before. It has only served to motivate us even more to finish this film and get it out there into the world.

But we’re not at the finish line yet! We still have a little less than $5,000 to raise, which is over $500 a day!

And just in time, we have two exciting new rewards to announce!

If you pledge at the $200 level, five contributors will receive THE BOX SET OF THE PBS DOCUMENTARY SERIES “WOMEN WAR & PEACE,” described as a bold mini series that “places women at the center of an urgent dialogue about conflict and security and reframes our understanding of modern warfare.” JGVSUSA Director Katia Maguire was Senior Associate Producer on the project, and Producer Nina Chaudry was Senior Producer. Check out the website for the series here. We’re so grateful to the series producers for allowing us to include this exciting reward as part of our campaign!

One lucky contributor of $300 or more could receive a ONE OF A KIND PIECE OF HANDMADE JEWELRY by award winning female metalsmith MEGHAN PATRICE RILEY, inspired by JGVSUSA and specially chosen for a contributor to our campaign! Meghan’s jewelry has been featured on Bottica.com and Fab.com, and is sold at museums and boutiques across the country. Please check out her website, available here, and check out the picture of one of her beautiful pieces below!

We also have some images of a reward we introduced last week--FIVE ORIGINAL 16" X 20" prints by JGvsUSA cinematographer and award-winning photographer Ross McDonnell, who along with the Nuru Project, graciously donated these gorgeous prints to our campaign. Ross's work has recently been featured in the New York Times, Time Magazine, and Very Short List. These photos were taken on Ross' recent world travels in Kenya and Afghanistan, and each print comes with a handwritten note from Ross detailing the story behind the photo. There are still five of these prints left for those who contribute $350 or more, so please check them out! And please read more about the inspiring work of the Nuru Project here: http://www.nuruproject.org/

You have helped us all so much already—through your contributions and your kind words—but if you can help us spread the word in these last few crucial days, we would be so grateful. As we’ve mentioned before, small things like sending a personal email to your family and friends about our Kickstarter campaign really go a long way--we’ve made some valuable new connections this way! And of course, blogging about our campaign, sending it along to your listserves, and posting or Kickstarter page on Facebook and Twitter really helps too.

Thanks again, for all you have done for us thus far. We’re almost there!

First off, a HUGE THANK YOU to all of you for so generously contributing to our Kickstarter campaign. For four years now we've been working with Jessica, her amazing family and the international community of activists, educators, attorneys, domestic violence survivors who have supported Jessica's case and cause, and it has been a true labor of love. We've seen firsthand time and time again how Jessica, by simply telling her own story of tragedy and resilience, has brought people to tears, inspired them, lit a fire underneath them, and encouraged them to speak out themselves about their own experiences. We've seen the impact that Jessica has created every time she speaks to a group about her story, and we know that this film will have that same kind of impact, only on a much larger scale.

The response to our Kickstarter campaign has been amazing so far. In the first 48 hours after launching, we raised over $5,000 – 25% of our total goal. However, as with so many of these campaigns, there's a great surge at the beginning, which then dies down after the initial excitement. We have only 16 days left in our campaign, and still have to raise around $12,000. That's about $750 for each day that remains in our campaign!

That's daunting, but we can do it, with the help of all of you.

Your support means the world to us! If you have it in you to help us out just a little bit more, we'd be so grateful. Things like posting the link to our Kickstarter project page on Facebook and on Twitter really do help, so please keep that up. And if you have friends/family/colleagues you think would have even a few dollars to donate (especially those who aren't on Facebook or Twitter), please shoot them a little email telling them that you supported this project, and that they should too.

As an incentive, we just added a few exciting new rewards:

If you pledge $100 or more, you'll receive an awesome, LIMITED EDITION T-SHIRT designed by Rob Carmichael, of the illustrious SEEN STUDIO! Rob's an incredibly talented graphic designer who has created cover art and apparel for musicians like Animal Collective, LCD Soundsystem, The Dirty Projectors and Beirut, as well as gorgeous film posters, clothing, books, and magazine covers. Check out some of his work here, and stay tuned for some images of our JGvUSA t-shirt in the next few weeks!

The first three of you to pledge at the $150 level will receive a ONE OF A KIND, HANDMADE TOTE BAG, made by JAMIE LAU DESIGNS, exclusively for our Kickstarter campaign! Jamie's work has recently been featured on Martha Stewart Living Radio and in the New York Times. Peruse some of her creations here: http://www.facebook.com/jamielaudesigns

For those NYC-dwellers on our list, a $300 donation can get you a SEASON PASS TO UNIONDOCS, a documentary arts collective and screening venue in Brooklyn!! UnionDocs hosts weekly intimate screenings and discussions with internationally-acclaimed artist, filmmakers, journalists and academics such as Barbara Hammer, Su Friedrich, Vincent Moon, and Richard Brody. JGvUSA co-director Katia Maguire is a former fellow at UnionDocs, and we're thrilled that they've made this generous contribution to our campaign.

And last but not at all least, JGvUSA cinematographer Ross McDonnell, along with the Nuru Project, have graciously agreed to give away five of Ross' original 11"x14" prints!! Ross is a brilliant and talented photographer and filmmaker, whose work has recently been featured in the New York Times, Time Magazine, and Very Short List. Anyone would be lucky to have one of these gorgeous and haunting prints up in their homes, and we're eternally grateful that Ross has decided to share them with 5 of you lucky backers, for a $350 pledge or more!

We'll be posting images of these prints on our blog and our Kickstarter page this week, so be sure to keep checking back for more updates.

Thanks again for your support so far - we feel so, so grateful for all of the amazing, inspiring and generous people we have met through working on this film. We can't wait to share the finished product with all of you!